Thursday brought the thrill of Christmas early with the arrival of my two boxes from the UK. I couldn’t remember exactly what was in there so some of the stuff was a surprise. It’s nice to have a few more clothes, CDs and pictures, plus random things like a Devon flag and my NASA mug. It was a double thrill when I got my first authentic Aussie ute experience transporting the boxes from work to home (how do you spell that….yute, yoot, ooot???...anyway utility vehicle…if you watch Neighbours you’ll know what one is!)
Thursday night encompassed some fine dining, well, snippets of fine dining as there was a market research society meeting with a Michelin starred chef cooking up a few treats. I’ve never had so much seafood in one night, not being a big seafood lover, but I gave everything a go. It was the classic roast pork belly which topped the night though and I managed to sneak a couple of plates of that! (they were only small samplers!!) Of course, this was washed down with some very fine local wines, which may inspire me to take up some more serious wine-tasting!
Friday marked my first experience of driving in Australia and I managed to crash twice. It was in a go-kart and no-one got hurt (apart from myself!) so fear not. The go-karting was down in a place called Hume and quite a decent sized track. I certainly got better with each lap and if it wasn’t for my 60+ second lap when I crashed and got stuck on the second run my average time would’ve been OK. But in the end I finished up last, a mighty precursor to future Aussie v England contests I fear. The karting was followed by some drinks and a good Indian feed in Manuka. I’ve had Indian in Australia before and it was noticeably different to the UK, this time round however was closer to home. There are so many eateries in Manuka and I have only just touched the surface so far.
I have been trying to adapt to Aussie life by embracing the local culture and had a meat pie for lunch on Saturday followed by an afternoon of flicking through the sport on TV trying to understand AFL (Aussie rules). Thankfully there was some rugby union on (Aus v All Blacks), a sport I understand reasonably well and I’m picking up League reasonably quickly. There is some coverage of the footy back home and I was in a pub on Saturday night where they were showing the premiership matches. On the cab drive home I was informed of a radio station where you can listen to the footie, and found that this was a Radio 5 commentary, which strangely made me think of home and going to the footy freezing cold buying a pastie!
Now here comes the touristy bit…
I decided to get some fresh air on Sunday afternoon and popped out for a stroll, taking me through Forrest to the back end of Parliament House. Here I wondered through the gorgeous parkland surrounding Parliament House, packed full of shrubs and gums and wattle, interspersed with tennis courts and views of the mighty flagpole.
You can easily kill an hour or so walking the grounds of Parliament House, sizing up the angles and the sculptures and views dotted around the place. From here you can also walk down to Old Parliament House, with yet more parkland and sculptures and pools offering some nice reflections
Finally the straight line of grand buildings ends on the shores of Lake Burley-Griffin, with views across to the city, Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain.
There is a great glow to the sky here at sunset, I think it’s commonly known as an “afterglow” which appears after the sun has gone down and lights up the horizon. So, it was with this afterglow that I walked along the lake, past numerous joggers, who like the birds seem to appear at this time of day and returned to Kingston.
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